I'm currently in the middle of scenario 01 with my wife. Despite the many questions that I have (had) with the game rules, we truly are having a blast!

I've noticed that each of the zombie cards that has a level for "1x fatty" has it at a level below "3x walkers". For example, card #24 has "1x fatty" at the "bad" (blue) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "worse" (yellow) level. Similarly, card #35 has "1x fatty" at the "worse" (yellow) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "uh-oh" (orange) level. However, the rules clearly state that any time a fatty spawns into the game, it's accompanied by 2 walkers. This being the case, how are 3 walkers worse than a fatty and 2 walkers?

Am I missing something? Was this intentional, or is this just a logic lapse? I guess it's not really that big of a deal (it is what it is), I'm just curious is all.

I suspect they made the cards first, then added the somewhat odd rule about fatties being spawned with 2 walkers later. If this was the case, it would explain why 3 walkers is worse than 1 fatty.

Additional tin-foil-hat theory: the symbol with "fatty plus" used to mean "spawn a fatty plus 2 walkers", but was later changed to mean abomination, and all fatties became "spawn with walkers". Otherwise, why doesn't the abomination get a symbol of it's own? A lot of things can change during playtesting. The abomination might not have been in the game when the cards were finalized.

It might be a way to balance the game. A fatty with 2 walkers might be bad at blue level, and this might make the game just hard enough at that point in time.

Later, when you have a hero at yellow, the 3 walkers appearing at yellow make the game harder, but still beatable. If the fatty appeared with 2 walkers, maybe the game would become too difficult too quickly.

It would be interesting to swap the symbols on the cards for an entire game to see how the difficulty would change.

I'm currently in the middle of scenario 01 with my wife. Despite the many questions that I have (had) with the game rules, we truly are having a blast!

I've noticed that each of the zombie cards that has a level for "1x fatty" has it at a level below "3x walkers". For example, card #24 has "1x fatty" at the "bad" (blue) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "worse" (yellow) level. Similarly, card #35 has "1x fatty" at the "worse" (yellow) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "uh-oh" (orange) level. However, the rules clearly state that any time a fatty spawns into the game, it's accompanied by 2 walkers. This being the case, how are 3 walkers worse than a fatty and 2 walkers?

Am I missing something? Was this intentional, or is this just a logic lapse? I guess it's not really that big of a deal (it is what it is), I'm just curious is all.

I'm currently in the middle of scenario 01 with my wife. Despite the many questions that I have (had) with the game rules, we truly are having a blast!

I've noticed that each of the zombie cards that has a level for "1x fatty" has it at a level below "3x walkers". For example, card #24 has "1x fatty" at the "bad" (blue) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "worse" (yellow) level. Similarly, card #35 has "1x fatty" at the "worse" (yellow) level, but has "3x walkers" at the "uh-oh" (orange) level. However, the rules clearly state that any time a fatty spawns into the game, it's accompanied by 2 walkers. This being the case, how are 3 walkers worse than a fatty and 2 walkers?

Am I missing something? Was this intentional, or is this just a logic lapse? I guess it's not really that big of a deal (it is what it is), I'm just curious is all.

It doesn't have to be worse. It's just different.

This. They are just randomizers.

I'm sure the reds are worse on average than the oranges (and so on), but not in every individual instance.

I'm sure the reds are worse on average than the oranges (and so on), but not in every individual instance.

But... The card says worse...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this was an oversight by the developers. This is by no means an insult to the team, as I'm sure it is VERY hard to develop a game and tie all of the ends together. Everything about this game is pretty much awesome. I just tend to agree with:

FuzzyBeard wrote:

I suspect they made the cards first, then added the somewhat odd rule about fatties being spawned with 2 walkers later.

I don't consider the zombie cards to be "randomizers." It's pretty obvious that the intent for the experience levels (blue, yellow, orange, red) was to make the game more challenging as a scenario progresses. This prevents things such as "camping," and adds a sort of logical timer to the game to keep players moving. It makes sense that the cards add more difficult groups of zombies with each additional experience level.

But, I'd love to get one of the developers in on this conversation and hear their $.02.

I propose you go through all the cards, looking at the red, orange, yellow, and blue levels individually.

I am almost positive that you'll find that taken as a whole, the reds are worse than the oranges, which are worse than the yellows, which are worse than the blues.

The way I think about it is this:

Let's say each possible "bad thing" that happens on the zombie spawn cards has a value. 1 would be "nothing happens" and 10 would be "an abomination spawns" or whatever.

I wasn't on the design team, but I suspect the cards are made so that the blue events are distributed so that they are mostly between, say, 1 and 4, with most of those being 2s and 3s. There are more 1s than at yellow, but less 4s.

Then yellow will have things ranging from 1-6, with most stuff being between 3 and 5.

Orange will ramp it up again, with an overall range of 1-8, with 1s being pretty rare, and most stuff being between 4 and 6.

Reds will have the whole range, from 1-10, with 1s being exceedingly rare, and most things falling between 7 and 9.

That's just my guess. I think the zombie spawn cards are randomizers, but the color levels let the designers randomize within a certain range. Yes, things are going to get tougher as the game progresses, but the game as a whole is much more exciting if every turn the players still have a chance of spawning 1 walker, even at the orange level.

Also remember that by the time you get to the red level you have a whole lot of zombie from the previous levels already shuffling around the board. As the levels go up, you are just adding more gasoline to the fire.

I'm sure the reds are worse on average than the oranges (and so on), but not in every individual instance.

But... The card says worse...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this was an oversight by the developers. This is by no means an insult to the team, as I'm sure it is VERY hard to develop a game and tie all of the ends together. Everything about this game is pretty much awesome. I just tend to agree with:

FuzzyBeard wrote:

I suspect they made the cards first, then added the somewhat odd rule about fatties being spawned with 2 walkers later.

I don't consider the zombie cards to be "randomizers." It's pretty obvious that the intent for the experience levels (blue, yellow, orange, red) was to make the game more challenging as a scenario progresses. This prevents things such as "camping," and adds a sort of logical timer to the game to keep players moving. It makes sense that the cards add more difficult groups of zombies with each additional experience level.

But, I'd love to get one of the developers in on this conversation and hear their $.02.

If the designers made the game how you envision it, then if everyone stayed in the blue skill level for most of the game, a fatty would never spawn, and I think that would be lame. I have a feeling the cards are made deliberately, with a difficulty curve for each color, like others have mentioned.

Yeah, each card does not represent an isolated series of increasingly tougher enemies. I mean, one card has an Abomination at Blue Level, if every level above that had to be increasingly tougher, then Red Level in that card would read "Zombies - 1 tray".

I think they just created several options for each level and distributed them among the cards, without necessarily making each card balance what's in each level, since that's really not important.